As I look back over my life, before I had any real identity, I was a traveler. I grew up an Army brat, a runaway, an activist, and a musician. All my life I've been traveling.
I became a musician because I love music, and that is what has sustained me; it's not because I thought it was a great way to make a living. Music saved my life.
I started out as a singer and a musician, and I was taught that your job is just to get out of the way of Brahms or Arthur Miller or Shakespeare and convey the brilliance that they created.
If I hadn't turned out to be a filmmaker, I would have been a musician.
If you're more interested in looking like a hipster, a jazz musician, or a young hunk, I'd recommend the pork pie. It has a narrow brim and a flat top.
I mean, I don't even think of myself as a musician, really.
I've always felt a great affinity with music. I've felt myself to be more of a musician than anything else, though I'm not proficient in any one instrument. But I think I have a musical sense of things... and writing seems to me to be a musical experience - rhythmically and in many other ways.
I've grown to love California: It's the dream of every English musician to come here and work in the sunshine. To walk up Sunset Boulevard, knowing you're going to make music - that's it.
As a musician, you just want to be able to do what you love.
It's nearly redundant to enumerate the reasons The Beatles are important. There are probably different reasons why The Beatles are important to a musician like myself and to the millions of Beatles fans who just enjoy listening to the music.
Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations.
Originally I studied as a musician, a classical pianist. That was my career before I took up acting in my late 20s.
Being in L.A., it was really hard to find a country writer and producer. I eventually - years of searching - found this guy, Dan Franklin. He's an incredible musician and producer. We write so well together... It's been a really cool experience.
Neil's effect on the band was immediate and very fulfilling. He adds a certain edge to the sound and, of course, he is an incredible musician. We became a better band because of the inclusion of Neil Young.
I'm more of an actor than a musician. I've made a little name for myself as an actor, but I also front this band. We have some great players out here, and we've found a little niche with L.A. Hootenanny.
When you feel like a musician you listen to is like you, then they don't feel so far away, and whatever you want to get to isn't so far away.
If you're a musician and an artist, you don't just stop.
I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician.
I like acting and being a musician. It's like comparing apples and oranges. But I really like my day job. I've always played music since I was 12, and I guess I always will.
'Cause I felt I didn't have anything else to prove as a musician... and boy was I wrong about that one.
I'm a musician. I play instruments. I dabble in the hip-hop field. That doesn't take vocal ability necessarily.
I used to try and make up visually for what I couldn't play as a musician. I used to get into very incredible visual things where, in order just to make one chord more lethal, I'd make it a really lethal looking thing, whereas really it's just going to be picked normally.
Finding a good bus driver can be as important as finding a good musician.
And a musician has to learn to be frugal and to carefully manage financial affairs.
I always knew I wanted to be a musician, and I always knew I wanted to write, 'cause the people I was listening to all wrote. I never thought it was an option to sing anyone else's songs.
You know, when you're an actor, you want to go to Hollywood. When you're a musician, you want to go to Nashville.
When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'
There was a time when a musician was forced to act in a video. Seeing a singer step too far outside of his comfort zone to pour all of his high-school-drama angst into a poorly scripted scenario was a sight to behold.
The real amazing thing about all of this is I think I've maintained the mentality of a musician throughout it all, which I'm proudest of. And I'm still playing on people's records and singing on people's records.
I suppose I am a frustrated musician so I annoy my family by playing guitar in the house. I used to be into acoustic stuff but my son Joseph is learning drums, so now I have an electric guitar and we play Metallica. We have an amp and a PA in the garage with his drum kit.
A musician has to find a way to make his music mean something special - spiritually or however you can.
I love the power of the musician who composes and performs. I envy their ability to put a nugget of truth in three minutes of sweat and emotional outpouring, colored entirely from their thoughts.
A lot of people ask how I ended up doing classical music given that I'm in a rock band. The truth is that it's the other way around. I was trained as a classical musician and then started playing in a rock band later.
I've dated the sweet mama's boy, the musician rocker, the struggling artist - basically a lot of people without jobs.
I feel like you're not a real musician or entertainer if you can't go into a room, pick up an instrument and entertain people.
When I went on tour with my father, I knew he was a musician. But they were my parents. I still think of my mum as being kind of a dork - a cooler one, but still a dork.
